A Study of Online Assessment Tools to Practice Programming and Their Effect on Students Grades

“Practice makes perfect” is an old phrase that proves truth in many aspects of the life of a computer engineer. Students in programming courses are reminded constantly by their instructors to practice in order to become better developers. Traditionally, book exercises have been used or assigned to students for practicing programming. However unless these exercises are counted for credit, some students will lack the motivation to do them. On the other hand, assigning too many problems for credit can become a time consuming activity for both students and faculty as well as a grading burden for instructors. It is also known that there are a lot of online resources for practicing programming, but students can get overwhelmed with so many tools. In this work in progress paper we present our preliminary results of how using online assessment tools can help student practice and improve their programming skills. The tools used provide immediate feedback and automatic grading. The hypothesis is that these tools help students to practice more and by giving them immediate feedback and quick grading, they get better at programming and consequently get better test scores. Preliminary data collected shows this to be the case. In this paper we present different scenarios how these tools were used and their effect in the final exam results in different semesters